Math - It's not about what you teach... It's HOW you teach

I personally like the way my title sounds! A teacher needs to know what his/her objective is when he/she is teaching. His/her main focus or objective is about teaching mathematics children. If we want children to learn, we let them correct their own mistakes, correcting the mistakes for them. In this way, we help children to feel and understand what they are doing and with this understanding, they are able to remember it.

"People won't remember what you tell them. But people can remember how you make them feel."

                                                                  -Dr Yeap Ban Har

I feel that this is a great statement to make. I didn't realize this until Dr Yeap mentioned it just now. This is really true. I thought that by memorizing, I am able to understand and learn. Initally, I depend very much on memorizing as I want to remember things quickly. But the fact is that I can't memorize and remember for nuts!

Even in Howard Gardner's theory, there is no such thing as "MEMORY INTELLIGENCE"! hahahaha If there is, I will be a GENIUS! Everyone will be too!

I also want to share something that I discovered. I have always thought that Math is somehow close-ended apart from the word problems (one definite answer) that we had to solve. But when Dr Yeap provided us with the above, I can see that there is no one definite answer and children can actually put in different numbers and get the answer 5. How cool is that?

It is really about how I make connections to things or prior knowledge, find patterns, reasoning as well as communicate my thoughts that I learn better.

This brings me to the 5 things we teach to develop thinking skills and problem solving.
1. Generalization
2. Meta cognition
3. Communication
4. Visualization
5. Developing number sense


Theorist Jerome Bruner uses the CPA Approach (concrete,pictorial,abstract) in learning things. By providing the concrete materials, children will be better able to do trial and error, understand and reason out why things are arranged in a certain manner. Then they move on to pictorial (2D) and proceed to look at abstract things. This is also true as in my childcare centre, we believe and also practice providing children with the opportunity to interact with materials as they learn. INTERESTING!

I want to share the different lessons we had today... It is really so difficult to choose one lesson as all the lessons are taught interestingly... But I personally like Lesson 7: Largest Even Number

There will be 4 number spinners and a 4 row of squares. The number spinner will be spinned one at a time. You will have to decide where you want to put the number. You have to bear in mind that you are to make the LARGEST EVEN NUMBER. So exciting! We played it a few times and guess what! I did got one right and got a peg for myself!!! This game really gives me the adrenaline rush! hahaha I guess we were so noisy that my friend from the class next door texted me and said, "What are you guys doing? Why so noisy!" hahahah

Word of the day: Subitize - counting a small number by looking

I would also like to thank Dr Yeap for pointing out on what I wrote on my first entry about math which was "Either you get it or you don't". Now I am going to do some corrections to it. It is "Either you have the opportunity to receive QUALITY INSTRUCTIONS or you don't".

Happy thinking!
Looking forward to another day of Math!